


The Remains of Flint and Pitch

by Experi



Category: Fate/Zero
Genre: Character Study, Depression, Extended Metaphors, Gen, M/M, as its own fucking tag bc lemme tell u: these dudes Hate Themselves, its not actually very shippy its just Yikes, these metaphors are so mixed that they might as well be a merengue, two dudes sitting in an alleyway 0 feet apart bc theyre Clinically Depressed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 06:39:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21114362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Experi/pseuds/Experi
Summary: There is no return of a prodigal son, there is only leaving a pile of bones wound with kindling on the doorstep and waiting for a match to catch.Self-destruction is a profession, and one done very well.





	The Remains of Flint and Pitch

**Author's Note:**

> i have blended the hell out of my metaphors until the egg white tips are stiff, and i am offering this prose poem metaphor merengue pie to you, and thats a threat.

It makes it difficult to rest when there is no home to go back to. Theoretically, when fighting in a Grail War pulls so much from Kariya and leaves him bleeding and immobile on the ground until dawn, he should spend the days somewhere that’s easy to sleep, near a leyline. Or at least with food. Something loosely approximating healthy for human survival. 

But that’s impossible, when the only place that lets him in the doors is the Matou mansion and his entrance there would be an intolerable walk that ends with him tossed back into the basement and Sakura having to see him at his lowest. None of it is exactly worth it. He has to settle for whatever side streets seem unlikely to feature anyone who would kick him out during the day, relying on the raging stubbornness and anger to keep him going.

It works well enough. He’s not exactly doing well by any stretch of the imagination, but he’s not dead. Yet. He sleeps a few hours, and his dreams are all hazy and feverish, nightmares of armour and burning and isolation that he’s not sure what to do with. Or who they belonged to originally. He sleeps (or thinks he does, maybe he’s simply unconscious), and waits, and pulls himself to something near cognizance when dusk starts to fall. He comes to with a more pronounced version of the quiet buzzing in his head that reminds him Berserker exists. A mental version of the cloud that surrounds Berserker, present in Kariya’s peripheral awareness since he was summoned.

(The fog is like it’s own miasma, something contagious that seems to eat at Kariya’s own consciousness. Tired and angry and despairing, full of hate that is directed at everything and only at the self all at once, a cloud and an ocean that’s easy to fall into. Maybe that’s what he’s feeling, maybe he’s blaming the curse he laid on Berserker for his own sick incoherencies and fixations.)

Berserker doesn’t manifest, which is unsurprising. He hasn’t manifested outside of a fight since his summons, only floats somewhere on the edge of Kariya’s awareness. Berserker doesn’t _ talk_, not much, but he gives distinct impressions of things that communicate to Kariya just the same. Berserker’s disgust at the worms is a different sort of feeling than Kariya’s own, like it’s been shaded in a different colour marker, and Kariya knows in a certain but wordless sort of way that Berserker is concerned for Sakura and Kariya himself. It’s communication of some sort, and it’s all Kariya expects now, when Berserker's presence is abruptly more pronounced.

He’s not sure what he expects, maybe something or other about wanting to find that Saber again (the feeling Berserker had upon seeing her nearly knocked Kariya to the floor, and that only as a weakened involuntary side-effect of their link, though Kariya supposes he can understand it). If it’s Saber, there’s nothing Kariya can do about that. He leans back and waits for whatever feeling-message Berserker chooses to communicate.

Instead he gets something different, the sense of a presence being _ near _ him but without any physical form and a quiet noise that sounds somewhat like metal crunching. “Master,” said in a strained mumble, slow and searching. Metallic, but understandable. “I wanted… to ask.”

The sentence drops off there, like he’s waiting for permission. Kariya lets it sit for a few beats before he realizes that nothing else is actually forthcoming, whatever the question Berserker had might be. Instead, he’ll offer his own comment. That will work as its own offer of permission. “You can talk,” says Kariya, dimly surprised. 

He’s never been sure if the heat-hazy memory he has of Berserker’s appearance shortly after he was summoned, where Berserker declared him the offering (and no angels were here to prevent this Isaac’s sacrifice), was a dream or not. Reality warps easily and uncertainly in Kariya’s mind, under the strain of using magic and the infection-fever caused by the crest worms. Maybe this whole war has been a dream.

Maybe Berserker in his entirety is a dream. 

It would be more fitting than reality.

“Yes,” Berserker replies, quiet. “Sometimes. While alone. It’s hard.” And his voice is hesitant, searching for the words, even now when he’s dematerialized and the strain of his existence is less, the madness enhancement so much less demanding than when he goes to battle. He settles into it, can find some rhythm to words, but it takes time.

He tries. Without a body, he still manages to stare at Kariya, watch him with a careful eye. He’s made up an opinion on his Master, that he might be a conglomeration that reminds Berserker of all his own worst traits, but he’s also the sort of stubborn that Berserker respects. Maybe his standards are low, maybe all it takes for Berserker to value someone is a sincere desire to protect something else and the willingness to summon Berserker even as a monster, keep him around despite their first interaction being a tearing at the throat. 

But it would be nice if his Master at least loosely tolerated him as well. There is loyalty, definite and certain, the one part of being a knight that Berserker will not give up. He will and does swear fealty to a lord who dared contract him and answer the desperate prayer for a knight’s fall from grace. He simply wants to know what standing he has with this man who reminds him of brushwood and tinder, how much he is allowed to protect and guard -- even if both of those things are moot points when his presence and fixations negate any ability to protect with how much a drain he is on Kariya. All tinder can do is burn, after all, and there is only so much time Kariya has until he disappears into ash. “Do you hate me?” Berserker asks.

It would make sense. The purpose of a monster is to be something quite easy to hate.

He still does not want to be hated by someone who, for once in his disappointment of a life, he might be able to follow. Someone he already owes simply by the sheer fact that Kariya was brave enough to curse him.

Kariya’s expression shifts in surprise. He’s never had anyone ask him that so directly. Hate for him was always directly stated and expressed towards him, never a question seeking his input. “No.” He doesn’t imagine why he should. There's nothing Berserker has done that seemed uniquely worthy of vitriol. “When I was younger, I read a lot of the legends,” Kariya adds, almost absentmindedly. “You were my favourite knight. And you answered my summons.” So how would he hate Berserker? Just because the Servant harms him? So does anything else, at least Berserker doesn’t seem to do it maliciously.

There is a long pause, where Berserker seems somehow contemplative despite being more or less non-visible. Something about the air, it makes Kariya wait and gives the impression that he’s thinking.

Eventually, Berserker sighs, an odd little echoing sound in Kariya’s thoughts. “I’m hardly the man in those stories. Only a nightmare.” It _ would _ be like that, wouldn’t it. A cruel joke played on Kariya. He has no other fate in this war than to be mocked, dragged along to see how much he can suffer before he dies; of course Berserker’s presence would be only because the old man might think it funny to degrade someone Kariya liked. A disgusting warping of a hero, tied and bound to him.

...But Berserker feels he doesn’t regret the binding. Only that it was intended to mock.

A weight appears on Kariya’s shoulder, the barely-manifested form of Berserker leaning his forehead against his master. He’s visible like a shade of a ghost, sitting alongside and facing Kariya, curled up like a guilty dog. 

A pang of sympathy, too familiar, like he’s seeing something hallucinated in a mirror, skitters across Kariya’s chest.

Kindling’s purpose is to disappear easily, contribute to a fire and waste away to ash. Dry things, coiled and knotted into a bony pile. Forgettable. A sacrifice as a jumbled collection of angles.

A jumbled collection of scars places its hand somewhere around where Lancelot’s helm should be, hovering just above without touching him. He’s like a ghost and Kariya isn’t certain if he wants to test if he’s touchable, a strange sense of foreboding, a cold staticky feeling where the fog around Berserker’s body has nestled near Kariya. Kariya laughs humorlessly, just once, like a spark catching. “I didn’t think you would be concerned with how I felt about you.”

“You answered my wish and let me fall as I wanted.” He pauses, an almost tangible consternation as Berserker tries to figure out the words from the fog in his mind, how he can place the words. “I don’t want… to fail you in return.” To continue on the selfish course -- it’s so easy, it’s always been his trend, but maybe now when he has already disappointed and forsaken every person who ever mattered, he can try and obey this one already-broken existence. His presence already weighs like a plague on Kariya, the worms hungry and the blood on his Master’s breath never really far from Lancelot’s notice. (The taste of Kariya’s blood in his own mouth, the offering and pact sealed, it was already contaminated and rotting, internally putrefied. For one who contracts himself to Lancelot as one would an illness, it’s fitting. Both of them carrying the weighty contagion of uselessness and, beneath it all, hopelessness.)

Kariya finds that it’s strange to have someone near him at all, much less someone who appears to think Kariya has standards that are worth living up to. Even when what Berserker thinks he ‘owes’ Kariya for is already something Kariya figured would be a good basis for anger. A burden.

Kariya does try to place his hand over Berserker’s helm in some parody of a reassuring gesture. It still has that strange feeling of static and like he’s putting his hand in frozen water without the actual feeling of cold. But it’s fine. Beneath the helm, Berserker closes his eyes. “You won’t,” says Kariya with a certainty he doesn’t care to figure out if he means. He doesn’t want to think about if he expects he can win this war. But he trusts, at least, that Berserker can fight when he’s asked to and if anyone here will be a failing, it will be Kariya’s failing as a mage.

Or as a person.

One of the two. Certainly not Berserker’s fault.

There’s only so much time to take for this, though. The longer Kariya might pause, the more time his thoughts have to fester. (The more time he’s wasting with his already limited ability to act, before his body too festers into unusability.) For the first time, though, he thinks it might be fine to take a pause to breathe, before Kariya thinks better of allowing himself that indulgence.

His hand drops back down to the ground. He can’t feel the impact of his knuckles against concrete, which is probably a good thing. “There’s work to do.” There always is, or at least something pressing on Kariya’s mind and nipping at his heels so he’s forced forward. It’s simply a matter of when he has the energy and physical stability to actually move. 

Berserker’s attention turns to Kariya properly (more like tilts his head just enough so he can stare at the bottom of Kariya’s face, but the effect is the same and he knows it), something that’s deeply tangible in the way that it makes the hair on the back of Kariya’s neck prickle. The curse is most evident in Berserker’s stare, something in it beside the glow that makes it eerie, tangible and almost paranoia-inducing. (Or just the sheer power of his fixation, any time he puts attention towards _ anything _ it is singular and Kariya is so unused to being paid attention to.) “You shouldn’t,” he mutters. “You’re going to push yourself too far. Collapse, bleed out, and die if you ask me to fight again so soon.”

Of course, Berserker will still fight. No matter the consequences. He’s too selfish for anything else, and cannot give up the one goal he chases and the function he has. Warmaking and violence are the last purposes he can cling to. The protest is only in a halfhearted sentence warning Kariya of the impending death he already knows about.

Kariya knows that. It still changes nothing. Kariya shrugs as best he can with a knight leaning on his shoulder and glaring at his jaw. “I don’t want to die.” But the fact remains. “But there’s no other end.” He may as well already be dead, a corpse only moving out of sheer stubbornness and the sort of dogged fixation (obsessions) that Berserker is no doubt intimately familiar with. He knows this.

“You’re my offering. I’ll carry you with me.” The reality of being bound, that Kariya’s existence is now linked to Berserkers by a pact and a promise and a summons -- and more importantly, by the reality of the madness enhancement, the fact that Berserker is solidified into the throne as a Berserker because of Kariya Matou’s actions and curse, means that Kariya is now inextricably a part of Berserker’s existence. Kariya is his now, and the reverse in return.

When he dies, Berserker will still carry his memory and his fate and his name (most importantly that; the power of a True Name exists and binds even for humans). Kariya Matou will not appear in the Throne of Heroes. But in some afterlife, somewhere, if there is a land manifested that Nimue left within that lake-legend for the dead, Berserker will protect his Master there.

Too little, too late, protection only post hoc, a dream in death and never any salvation in life. But Berserker is nothing if not a disappointment, and this is what he offers. It will have to be enough.

Kariya looks down at him, a weird mix of sad and fond that even he’s not sure what to do with. (Who would want to carry someone like him with them? Not even Sakura likes him any more, only a loose tolerance of the idiot who caused her to enter the Matou house and now struggles uselessly to free her. Ha, ha, imagine being anything other than a burden.) He resists the urge to tell Berserker fine, but that’s your loss. Instead: “I’ll trust you. Let’s go, then.”

Obediently, the weight disappears from Berserker’s spot near Kariya and the half-physical half-ghost appearance of the Servant vanishes just as quickly. Kariya takes a breath and balances himself against the wall behind him to haul himself uncomfortably and unsteadily to his feet, but before he can properly stand himself up, Berserker appears once more. He’s standing shortly before him, manifested properly (it causes a twinge of pain to flare over Kariya’s nerves thanks to the worms, but what doesn’t lately). The suit of armour holds a hand out for him, expectant and silent.

Kariya glares at him. “I don’t need your help to get up. I’m not that bad.” He might be a heap of poorly bound twigs, but he’s not incapable.

Berserker doesn’t move. “I know.”

Kariya waits a moment to see if his glaring will do anything (it doesn’t), then gives up and grabs the hand, let Berserker be his support when he lurches to stand. Irritatingly, it does actually help to have someone stand steadily when the usual dizzy tunnel vision takes him over for a few seconds.

How troublesome. (How novel.)

Kariya’s hand drops from Berserker’s as soon as he can see straight, and Berserker disappears just as quickly. He’s never properly gone, there is always that strange buzzing weight in the back of Kariya’s mind that signals his Servant’s presence somewhere in the ether, somewhere in his shadow. (And maybe there always _ will _ be that weight. At least something is reliable.)

With the familiar stiff noncompliance in his movements, Kariya limps unsteadily out into the dark. He knows he was right about work to do, and it’s simply a matter of seeing how much he can accomplish before he’s consumed and left for bones and ash.

Who knows what Berserker will stay to see, but Kariya trusts that he can, at least, be relied on as a constant. He’ll give Berserker what he can.

The solidarity between desperate afterthoughts.

**Author's Note:**

> just wait till i go full “i write the content i want to see in the word” and create a whole fic thats just ‘basakari everyone gets the gilgamesh treatment au so they kidnap sakura and move to europe never to be seen by zouken again and then berserker and kariya make out in the french countryside the end’ :u
> 
> Im begging you to leave a comment


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